Stephen Maher: The case of the G8 fund, the missing documents and edited 'sures'

Last year, when the auditor general’s people went to Infrastructure Canada to examine the G8 Legacy Fund, they asked officials for the paperwork that shows how the government decided which town would get how much money for how many gazebos

Last year, when the auditor general’s people went to Infrastructure Canada to examine the G8 Legacy Fund, they asked officials for the paperwork that shows how the government decided which town would get how much money for how many gazebos.

The officials, after what I imagine was an awkward silence, informed Sheila Fraser’s auditors that there was no paperwork.

The paper trail stops at the riding office of Tony Clement, MP for Parry Sound-Muskoka and, at the time, industry minister.

When interim auditor general John Wiersema testified at committee later, he said that Parliament ought to look into that.

So Clement came to committee on Nov. 2 to explain what happened.

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NDP MP Charlie Angus wanted to know what happened to the missing documents.

“Would you give this committee those evaluations so that we can see what they found?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Clement. “My recollection of this is that there are two sets of projects that I think we are talking about,” and he blathered on not very helpfully.

Angus asked again, waving the odd homemade application form that municipalities were asked to fill out and forward to Clement’s office.

“Would you submit the projects that came in on this homemade piece of paper to our committee, because the auditor general didn’t have any projects on that. How many? Could you give them to us?”

“Sure,” said Clement. “I believe the document that you’re holding up is a document that was created by the local municipalities, it wasn’t created by me, per se.”

Twice Angus asked if Clement would provide the documents and twice Clement — a career politician — said “sure.”

But when the official record of the hearing appeared from the House of Commons Hansard office, those two “sures” were gone. Clement did not agree to provide those mysterious documents.

I don’t really care very much how much money Clement blew on gazebos in Muskoka. It isn’t like the sponsorship scandal, because there is zero suggestion that Clement was funnelling money to friends of the party. He just failed to show good judgment, got carried away playing Santa Claus. That’s not the end of the world.

I do care — a lot — about the auditor general getting access to any piece of paper in the possession of the government of Canada, not just the ones that the government feels like sharing. The shredder is the enemy of democracy.

Clement hasn’t coughed up those papers and he hasn’t given a comprehensible answer as to why not.

At committee, with Angus going after him, he appeared to say he would produce them. It sounded great, but we still haven’t seen those documents.

MPs have the right to review a preliminary transcript of committee hearings and proceedings in the House. They’re called the Blues, because they are traditionally printed on blue paper, to distinguish them from the white pages in Hansard, the official record.

MPs can propose minor changes to the patient Hansard editors, who then consider the changes, and make them or not, as they see fit.

They are guided in their deliberations by a 1,417-page book called House of Commons Procedure and Practice.

“Members may suggest corrections to errors and minor alterations to the transcription but may not make material changes in the meaning of what was said in the House,” says the book. “It is a long-standing practice of the House that editors of the Debates may exercise judgment as to whether or not changes suggested by Members constitute the correction of an error or a minor alteration.”

Monday morning, the NDP held a news conference on Parliament Hill, at which Angus accused Clement of having the “sures” removed.

After Question Period on Wednesday, Clement rose to complain to the House Speaker that the NDP had breached his parliamentary privilege by suggesting that he changed the record. “I have not, nor has anyone in my employ,” he said. “I respectfully ask that you review this matter to determine how and why these changes were made and that you provide assurance to this House as to the reasons for any changes to the official record of this place.”

Note, please, that Clement says he did not make the changes. He doesn’t say that he didn’t ask for them to be made.

That’s the sort of lawyerly distinction that slippery politicians like to hide behind, but I doubt that’s the case here.

NDP staffers have done a good job digging up information on this file and forcing Clement to account for himself, but they told me Wednesday that only two “sures” were removed from Hansard, suggesting a strong circumstantial case for political manipulation of the record.

I compared the documents side by side, though, and you can see an editor has cleaned up a lot of the text, removing lots of words from everybody’s rambling speeches. Clement often begins his responses by saying “sure,” a kind of verbal tick. The editors removed some and not others, seemingly at random.

So Clement likely didn’t alter the record, and likely the NDP got a little carried away.

I propose that the NDP drop their accusation and Clement bring in those missing documents and we can all forget about this little mystery.

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